


Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field one Night

by highfantastical



Category: E.R.
Genre: Angst, Drug Addiction, Friendship, Gen, Rehabilitation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:01:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highfantastical/pseuds/highfantastical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He feels an ocean of shame washing inside him, lapping at his edges, spilling out of his eyes and nose. His legs are watery and he knows that if Dr Benton lets go of him he’ll fall down on his ass and sit there on the concrete, sobbing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field one Night

_Vigil strange I kept on the field one night;_  
 _When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day,_  
 _One look I but gave which your dear eyes return’d with a look I shall never forget_  
-Whitman

 

Peter calculates the hours and tells himself what he already knew: it’s too soon for Carter to have tremors. He is shaking – because he is shaking, which is no answer at all. The tears soak through Peter’s shirt. After the first moments he doesn’t talk much; he’s never known what to say to Carter. If he does say the right thing on occasion, it’s more by accident than by design.  


What he said must have been right, though, because surely this is better than the coldness, the glibness, the meanness? All of which are nothing like Carter. He’s known Carter for six years, now. 

Perhaps Carter doesn’t agree that this is better: perhaps that defence was the last thing he could manage to hold onto. Peter’s body is the shield, but he’s just a man. He can’t heal Carter any more. The one who’d be better at dealing with this is – Carter, if Peter’s honest. Carter, who’d get right in there with the pain, even when he was a student, something Peter can still hardly bring himself to do. 

It’s not that he doesn’t care, but that hiding it, hardening it, was the only tool he could be certain of. The attack scared him the way Reese coming had scared him, though he’ll never tell that to anyone: it sounds crazy. But if being a doctor has taught him anything in the way of a life lesson, it’s that love like that, when you really don’t expect it, is the most terrifying thing on earth.

 

John has a pretty good idea now what dying feels like, and this isn’t it. The pain is not that sort of pain, and even though his hand is aching and his head is aching and his back is fucking throbbing, none of those things come close to the worst parts of this worst day – which, of course, isn’t really the worst day at all.  


He feels an ocean of shame washing inside him, lapping at his edges, spilling out of his eyes and nose. His legs are watery and he knows that if Dr Benton lets go of him he’ll fall down on his ass and sit there on the concrete, sobbing. But he only knows that with a tiny bit of his mind, because most of it seems to have been blotted out. 

 

Carter’s crying really hard. And it’s not like that’s a big shock: Peter’s seen him cry before. A warm spring wind blows down the street and Peter feels the patch of tears spread wider, wetter, on his shirt. He’s more observant than Carter’s ever given him credit for – but he missed this, he thinks, and bites his lip – and if Carter ever thought his all-seeing resident didn’t know he was a weeper, he was wrong. Just because he saw, that doesn’t mean he thought it was right to say anything. No, he gave Carter some credit for doing his best to hide it: and there were plenty of kind-hearted people to administer the well-timed shoulder pat when needed. Susan Lewis, Mark Greene, Carol Hathaway – nature’s handholders.  


But not him. If the kid couldn’t cut it … he begins to smile at the stupid pun, only it’s not funny – not now. Carter didn’t come to him for comfort, and he hasn’t today either. And when Gant died – it’s not something he thinks about often, but he has come to realise that Carter wasn’t doing what he thought at the time. However much he wanted consolation, he wasn’t trying to wring it out of Peter, but to offer it.  


Peter doesn’t know if he was just pig-headed – it seems possible – or whether the scene in the trauma room deceived him. He got what Carter never had with Lucy: the chance to try. And he worked fast, with unimpeachable steadiness, but Gant’s injuries – his mind supplies the phrase at once – were too severe. 

He called the time of death and Doyle took off her trauma gown and her gloves and her goggles, and then she walked around the table to Carter and took off his. Peter remembers that clearly. Doyle walking around the table and plucking the goggles from Carter's wet, contorted face; pulling off the gown like a mother. She put her arm around him and guided him out: Peter remembers her talking in an undertone as they left, but not her words. He'd like to think that that moment tricked him into believing that all Carter sought was some kind of reassurance – a make-do, sexless substitute for Abby Keaton’s tenderness. Now he knows better: Carter wasn’t asking, because he’s never learned to ask. It’s easy to think he is - because although Carter knows he ought to hide what he feels, he can’t do it: he's more readable than the Trib. And he’s the worst liar in the hospital, Peter thinks. His lies are as transparent as other people’s confessions. But his family … Peter damns them silently, and kisses the top of Carter’s bent head again.  


If Reese got hurt – and even thinking it puts a cold stone of nausea into his stomach – he’d get there. If the US Marines stood in his way, he’d fight and fight to get through them because nothing in the whole world would matter except being with his son. They could arrest him, or beat him up, or anything. All Carter’s parents had to do was take a first-class flight. Hell, for all Peter knows, they’ve got a jet of their own. 

He’d dropped by regularly, because Carter looked really bad for the first few days, and once or twice he’d asked if they’d been around earlier. Then he stopped asking, because he’d guessed they weren’t going to come at all.  


If they had – it’s pointless to wonder, though. He says again, “It’s okay, man. It’s okay.”  


He wonders how Carter happened: how he came from stock as cold as that.

 

The day unfolds itself in bright flashes inside John’s mind. More than one day, actually: it’s kind of a blur. He needs to look after Abby, because she’s having a hard time. She isn’t used to this.  


His back hurts. It still hurts. It hurts a lot – what do you expect, that guy throwing him off like that? If he got checked over they’d give him something for the pain. You shouldn’t just leave someone in pain. Especially if they’re confused, upset. And teaching is difficult; students get things wrong. They see things that haven’t happened. They don’t have enough experience yet.  


What are you supposed to do when it hurts all the time, and then it hurts even more? No, it’s not Abby’s fault. You learn best if you’re thrown in at the deep end.  


And you got the job done: the reduction was successful and the fluid –  


The fluid was clear. No, that wasn’t today.  


Of course terrible things happen: you can’t work in the ER and not know that, and he already knew it. It’s part of being grown-up.  


What are you supposed to do when it hurts all the time, he thinks – but even that thought is muddled.

 

Chen comes out of the doors, sees them, and freezes.  


Peter mouths at her, “Keys.” He’s not taking Carter back in there: not like this. Straight to the airport, but they need Mark’s keys. He watches Chen turn and walk slowly back into the ER, and he wonders if this is the right thing. It seems reasonably likely that Carter would prefer Mark to take him. He’s still scared of Peter, and the unsettling closeness that lay between them after the attack is gone – he wanted it to be gone, because that would mean Carter was okay.  


There was raw fright in Carter’s eyes when he saw that Peter was there with the others, and now Peter thinks: it’s like the other time. Carter can’t come to him when something is wrong. If he couldn’t even tell Peter he wanted to leave surgery, he’d be in no hurry to confess an addiction. Maybe with good reason: Peter isn’t sure he does feel the same as he felt before, when he thought Carter was handling everything. His well-hidden, half-reluctant awe (because if he’d been Carter, and his student, Carter himself, had died – he won’t think about it, not now) hasn’t survived intact. He feels something different and he’s not sure what to call it.  


Carter starts trying to speak for the first time, but the words are virtually unintelligible. Peter thinks he can make out ‘sorry’ more than once.  


“I’ve got you,” he says. “I’ve got you.”  


He kisses Carter’s head again, and Chen comes out with the keys in her hand and sees him doing it. She holds out the keys silently, and he nods and takes them: his body is holding Carter’s up, they’re pressed so close that he can reach out his hand for the keys and Carter won’t fall.  


Chen is dying to speak, he can tell, but he gives her a warning little headshake. It seems impossible that Carter will come back: but if he does, it’s better for him not to know that she was there. 

 

Eventually John’s tears slow down. The body won’t cry forever. He knows he’s said a few words but probably they didn’t make much sense, so he tries again.  


“I’m really sorry,” he says. His voice squeaks exactly like it used to when he was fifteen years old, and his throat feels like it’s lined with mucus.  


“We’re going to get in the van now,” Dr Benton says.  


That voice – with exactly the same tone in it – was the first thing John heard as he came out of the anaesthetic. He remembers it pretty well: not everything, but Dr Benton being there, and the swimming blanket of painlessness that covered him. He knows, although he’s tried really hard to forget it, that he asked for his mother a couple of times, just after waking up, and Dr Benton said she was coming. 

 

Peter leads Carter to the van, unlocks it, helps him in. He walks round the front and gets into the driver’s seat.  


Before he starts the engine, he looks across at Carter and wonders what he should say. From the neck down, Carter’s still a perfect WASP – but his face is splotchy and covered with tears, soaked with them. His lips look chapped and sore. For the life of him, Peter can’t think of anything that will help. He reaches out one hand and squeezes Carter’s shoulder for a minute.  


Then he eases the van out into the traffic. He knows Carter has this thing about him - whether it's outdated hero-worship, or a craving for a approval, or even some kind of crush, though Carter's always seemed straight as an arrow to him - and he's never been able to fathom it. He gives less than any other resident he knows, and the general opinion of him up in surgery (skilled but chilled, or bold but cold) is one he doesn't have a problem with. Maybe he cultivates it - hard to say, in a hospital, where reputation ends and reality begins. 

Now, pausing at the intersection, he wonders if Carter goes for that because it's what he knows. He's never thought that he, Peter Benton, could have anything in common with the Carters, but knowing what he knows now - 

Carter's been trained to look for affection in - he searches for some way to think about the Carter family - an expanse of snow. White, frozen, and deceptive. He expects to have to work for it, and he expects that great effort will yield little return. It makes sense, but that doesn't mean Peter has to like it. He can tell that Carter's trying hard, really hard, to stay quiet now, to hold onto his composure. The silence inside the van is broken by the miniature sounds of aftermath: tiny sniffs, controlled swallowing. 

He can think of some things other people might say, under the circumstances. But he can't say them himself. Understanding Carter better should have helped him - really, it ought to have helped him long before this - but it doesn't. It's some of the least useful knowledge he has ever possessed. 

**Author's Note:**

> In the past few weeks I've re-watched the first ten seasons of E.R. to take my mind off things - and although I don't normally write American canons, and I don't normally write about television, and I don't normally write modern-day settings, I ended up starting this journey-to-Atlanta story. There's quite a bit more to come if I can beat it into shape.


End file.
